Thursday, October 13, 2011

Li'l Buggers: Slab 'N' Ernie

Slab 'n' Ernie are real little buggers.

They crave trouble and terrorize the other kids in the neighborhood and are a bad influence on all small things.Their uncle George Liquor loves the little buggers and thinks they are the greatest kids in the world. Wet clay that he can mold into God-fearing decent Americans.He steeps them in superstition because he believes that only a big dose of fear of the unexplainable can lead to a life of goodness. He takes them into a bare room with 4 concrete walls and asks them "What do you see in here, lads?" They look around confused and say "Uh..nothing!" George says "Then make something up and worship it!"

Their favorite cartoon character in all of cartoondom is the beloved Donald Bastard, meanest and most unintelligible thing on webbed feet.Donald is not only a wacky cartoon character, he is a mixed martial artist, one of the feather-for-feather greatest ever.Slab N Ernie love to pick on the nerdiest kid in the block, Bobby Bigloaf.Bobby is much smarter than Slab 'N' Ernie, therefore they feel it's their duty to teach him the hierarchy of child life. "Hey fat boy, smart kids are at the bottom of the heap, it's us dumb kids that rule the block!" They instinctively know that someday smart kids will make more money than them, so the time for payback is now while they are still kids. They make a preemptive strike: "THIS is for your 5 room bungalow that'll be PAID for!" they say as they sock him in his freckled belly.

Slab 'N' Ernie are regularly featured on Anderson Cooper's Bullying In America series and George always gets a proud tear in his eye. "I taught 'em everything they know!"

Slab N Ernie are sometimes nice to Bobby, because Bobby has the best comic book collection in town and they love to come over and read all the comics...then pull out all the staples. Bobby has very specific rules about how to handle comic books, but Slab N Ernie ignore them, flicking the staples at Bobby.

Bobby dreams of one day becoming a world famous and influential comic book writer. He buys doubles of all his favorite comic mags and cuts out the word balloons from the copies. He pastes his favorites on the fridge (his secret lair). He memorizes the best writing from the comics. He has a t-shirt with "Unggggghhhh!" written boldly across it.Bobby'd really rather draw the comics than write them but alas, he does not have the gift of artistic talent. He is always dreaming up new colors of underpants for his comic heroes to wear. "Oh, if only I knew an artist who could see the fantastic colors in my head!" He has a boat load of coloring books. He fills in the pictures with descriptions of the colors since he can't color with crayons very well; he always goes outside the lines (especially with his descriptions of colors) which is a sin. "Emerald green, with a hint of ash-teflon...!" His Mommy is so proud of his verbal color sense.

Bobby loves to go to conventions and dress up as colorful fat heroes or funny animal "toon" characters.

He has created the first super hero character that never works out, who gets his powers from potato chips.

Slab N Ernie love to make fun of him in his costumes. They pick on him constantly but in the end, always get their just desserts. Either George catches them, or the Lord steps in to dish out penance. George: "What you bad boys need is a dose of the Good Book!" He hauls out his heaviest bible and whacks their behinds with it.http://jkcartoonstories.blogspot.com/2010/03/comic-book-day.html

Slab N Ernie and Bobby are all fascinated by girls. Especially the bad Catholic Girls that live across the railroad tracks and corrupt all good boys who dare to trespass in the bad neighborhood.

John, with that recent interview you did with cartoonbrew, the interviewer mentioned he had worked on the Ren and Stimpy revival and how much your animation style had changed since then.

As an avid/curious fan, I would like to know what are your thoughts on how the R&S revival turned out, both back then and now looking back several years later. Would you do things differently with it today?